Riley shrugged. “Why not both?”
He gave a firm nod and turned to his sketchpad. “I’m on it.”
Riley chuckled and refocused on his screen. An extremist religious group was surveying their community to name members who weren’t representing their Christian values, so Riley was digging for information on the group’s leaders and posting the info to their social media page.
It wasn’t hard to use the cloud to hack one of thepastor’s computers to find evidence of him grooming some of the youngest and most vulnerable members of his church. Riley had also found evidence of the guy watching hours of gay porn on his work computer, despite preaching that the people in those videos would burn in hell.
Hypocrisy was too easy to find in political leaders, unfortunately. The loudest voices were often the biggest hypocrites of all.
Their followers often weren’t any better. Riley had spent some time taking screenshots of posts that completely contradicted later posts, saying one politician should be impeached for one action and later applauding another for doing the exact same thing.
He posted the evidence he found to the group’s main social page, even though it would likely be deleted fairly quickly. He ran a bot that would repost it every ten minutes for twenty-four hours to drive them crazy. As a backup, he also placed a little bug in their system that would attach all the info to their pastor’s automatic email signature, then he sent it to a trustworthy political influencer who would help spread the details.
Everything was done under an anonymous account, completely untraceable for his safety. He didn’t want to have to worry about any retaliation against him or anyone he cared about.
His gaze sprang to Josh at thethought. He was deep in the zone, not noticing anything else around him as he sketched. Riley considered himself a calm, rational man, until Josh got involved.
When they were kids, Riley would sometimes have to stand up to bullies for Josh. It wasn’t that Josh couldn’t handle himself, but he didn’t always realize when he was being targeted. If Riley was a superhero like the ones Josh was sketching, Josh would be his biggest weakness.
Josh was simply too trusting. He believed everyone had goodness in them. Riley had seen enough of the opposite to know that wasn’t the case, but he loved the optimistic view Josh had of the world—and he’d do anything to protect that innocence.
He remembered holding Josh as he cried after a girl in high school told him she’d rather have someone more manly to date, rocking him in his arms as he complained about a math teacher questioning if he wasreallyAsian after getting a D on a test, crying with him as they held ice packs to each other’s jaws after getting in a fist fight after school with kids who wanted to challenge “Jackie Chan” to a brawl.
The bullying wasn’t as bad in college, but when COVID hit, some of their clients didn’t want to work with them anymore, blaming the virus on Josh’s people. Riley was still shocked by it every time it was mentioned, unable to understand how anyone could look at Josh and see anything but an amazing man.
It angered Riley like nothing else. And every single time, every. Single. Time. Josh would wipe his eyes, blow his nose and say they didn’t know any better. He was a stronger man than Riley ever was, than anyone he’d ever known.
There were some moments over the years when it seemed like things were getting better. When Marvel releasedShang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Josh finally got some positive attention.
His whole life, Josh had had to deal with people thinking he was someone else, since some ignorant people had trouble telling Asians apart. However, Josh actually looked a lot like Simu Liu, the man who starred in the film as the superhero. They were in their mid-twenties when Josh dressed as him for Halloween for a trip to an Atlantic City nightclub and collected more numbers that night than he had the last five years combined.
Riley remembered how confused Josh had been at the attention. It was like the world had finally realized how hot he was, when Riley had always known.
After theBarbiemovie came out, Riley donned a blond wig for Halloween so they could dress as the two main Kens. That night, a buxom woman dressed as Barbie convinced them to have a threesome.
It wasn’t something they’d ever repeated, though. At the time, Riley wasn’t sure why it wasn’t the hottest night of his life, but he got distracted every time hewatched the woman kiss and touch Josh. There was a moment where she’d been between them, her hands pleasuring both of them at once, when he’d gotten a flair of anger watching her touch his Josh. He’d had to close his eyes to keep from losing his erection.
It was pretty obvious to him now that he’d been jealous of her hands on Josh, wishing he was in her position.
What an idiot he’d been. He'd wasted years on mediocre sex with women when his dream man was in the next room.
He refused to waste any more time.
Riley realized he didn’t hear Josh’s pencil scratching paper anymore, and when he turned to see what he was doing, Josh had stopped sketching and was looking at Riley thoughtfully.
“What are you thinking?” Riley asked.
“I was wondering, how did you get so handsome? Like, how do you do it?” Josh asked.
Riley couldn’t help but chuckle, but he stopped when he saw how serious Josh was.
“What are you talking about?You’rehandsome.”
He scoffed. “No, I’mcute. Big difference. You’re likeGQhandsome; tall, dark and handsome; romance cover novel handsome.”
“Josh," Riley said. "You’re fucking beautiful. I see you and I… I can’t believe you picked me. I can’t believe Iget to wake up to your beauty every morning. And you’re so much more than that. You’re my best friend. The only one who really sees me, who knows all my tells. You’re a sweet cinnamon roll and you were made for me.”
Josh smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, and Riley realized what bothered him.
